


Maintenance rota

by Brynnen, TwaCorbies (Brynnen)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Admiration, Astringent comfort, Friendship, Gen, Phasma Is Awesome, non-sexual nudity, space nazis are crap at kindness, space swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-14 17:25:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14140896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brynnen/pseuds/Brynnen, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brynnen/pseuds/TwaCorbies
Summary: They have each other's backs, for all neither was trained to be gentle or equipped for kindness, they're in this together.





	1. Phasma

Hux huffed impatiently as he waited for the door to open. The corridor was empty this late into the cycle and he had a thousand and one more items on his to-do list. He waited for a full minute, toe tapping impatiently, before he tutted and overrode the lock, swooping inside and casting a critical eye over his fellow officer. She didn't even stir at the clatter of his bootheels and was unaware of his haughty stare.

  
'Hmph.' He strode through to the fresher and located the medkit with practised ease, stowed as it was identically to his own in the cupboard above the sink, albeit not identically equipped. Phasma hadn't stirred throughout all the huffing, tutting and clattering, so he nudged her leg none too gently with the toe of one shiny boot to rouse her.

  
She jolted into consciousness, lurching upright and levelling a blaster at him. Her hand was steady, her aim true even in the state she was in. Hux merely gave her a withering look over the blaster's barrel and set the medkit down on the bed beside her.

Phasma expelled her breath in one explosive gust. 'Kriffing stars, General! I'm going to end up shooting you one of these cycles! Just sod off and leave me in peace!' This was part of the ritual and Hux merely sniffed disdainfully.

  
'Shut up, Captain. Frankly you're neither use nor ornament in your current state.' He gave her a pointed look-over, from the black eye all the way down to the probably broken toes of her right foot, taking in the carnage wrought upon her that even chromium armour couldn't fully absorb.

  
It wouldn't do for the troopers to see her in the medbay for anything less than actual dismemberment, so here they were again. The shining captain and her hellish general huddled together to lick their wounds and regroup, no one else trusted not to attempt assassination at the slightest hint of vulnerability.

  
At a gesture from him she stripped off the loose nightshirt she'd been wearing and sat up to allow him to begin work. Years of service had inured them to such fripperies as body-consciousness or modesty. Hux reached into his tunic pocket and tossed a tiny droid, smaller than his fist, into the air. It began to orbit Phasma as Hux rummaged through the medkit for the relevant supplies.

  
The non-standard diagnostic droid auto-wiped upon being switched on or off and did not upload copies of its findings onto any other device or network. He'd designed and built it for his own use, but chosen to build another for her. Phasma's secrets would be safe, the least reward her service deserved.

  
As it flew about her, whirring and emitting shrill beeps, Hux sat back onto the low stool by her bed and met her eyes. He looked weary. 'What was it this time?'

  
The bored tone concealed genuine curiosity. Her whole left side was purpling into one enormous bruise. She'd obviously pulled another of her idiotic stunts that awed the lackwits she commanded and cemented her legend further. She was a magnificent example of the superior calibre of their soldiers. She could also, in the heat of the moment, do some bloody stupid things. The dangerous grin she treated him to at the question told him this was one of those times.

  
'A Rebel suicider was coming in hot on a light speeder, right at my trooper line and our transport. So obviously I body-checked it and then used the remaining inertia to swing the whole rig straight back around and into the rebels behind him. The device went off before I could get out of the blast range, but he took out a dozen of his own people with that stupid stunt!' She gloated, giggling at the memory. Evidently she'd got into the heavy painkillers before he'd arrived then.

  
'And very nearly you too. Idiot.' Hux noted the cracked, fractured bones the scan threw up and drew down a dose of calcifier, delivering a dose across her ribcage and another down the side of her pelvis and along her femur.  
The droid's scans indicated he miraculously had avoided liquefying her internal organs via blunt force or shockwave trauma and she'd already taken (hopefully) appropriate pain relief, so all that remained to treat was the practically full-body bruising she'd received for her efforts.

  
He twitched his hand in a lateral motion, silently commanding her to roll onto her belly and once she'd settled he began to apply liberal handfuls of the salve, rubbing it meticulously into her soft tissues.

  
The work was steady and repetitive, lulling him into the same kind of easy trance he fell into when doing maintenance on weapons both large and small. As his blaster protected him, so too did the Captain. Their goals were aligned, their wills twinned. He would regret her death and said as much.

  
'I know.' She shrugged as she shifted onto her 'good' side to allow him better access to the bruising on her hip and leg. The movement was less pained than it had been half an hour previously. 'I'd hate to have to kill you for the cause.'

  
'Noted.' He recapped the tube of salve and left without a backward glance, hearing her breathing softening out into sleep as the door closed behind him.


	2. Hux/Sleep

Phasma covertly observed the general as she refilled her water glass. Things had been hectic of late and from the way he looked she guessed he'd last slept around fifty hours ago. Not that most could tell, he hid it well and quite rightly so. Less idealogically sound officers onboard Finaliser might be tempted to take advantage of anny ign of weakness and deprive the First Order of a valuable asset.

Enjoyable though flaying the culprits alive might be, she'd rather the general not be murdered.  
She said nothing, of course. She made no visual sign of her observation, instead going back up to the serving hatch for another bowl of stew, dropping an extra bread roll on Hux' sideplate as she passed him. Even he couldn't resist the milk-glazed rolls the canteen staff prepared every third month. She stuffed her fourth roll into her mouth and tore into the stew with relish, it was amazing!

  
The corridors were empty by the time Phasma judged it reasonable to take action. She passed only two other souls in the corridor, both heavy-eyed and yawning as they presumably made their way to bed. Any sensible person on alpha shift would be tucked up in bed by now, but neither of them had ever been accused of that.

  
'General.' She buzzed his door-comm, ready to provide an excuse for her presence, but the door slid open before she could give it.

  
'You look like shit.' She didn't bother sugar-coating it, he'd never had any time or patience for that wampa-shit.

He looked up from the array of tablets, screens and flimsies he was working on, wincing a little as the movement aggravated the headache he'd probably had for the last few days. He was immaculately well-turned-out as ever, but his eyes looked bruised with exhaustion and his shoulders were tense, squared as if he were going to physically push through his physiological limits.

  
'How long?'

  
He blinked at her curt question and it was telling that he actually had to stop and thing about the answer, fingers twitching as he mentally rattled through the abacus. 'Sixty hours.'

She raised her eyebrows at that. Less than three shift cycles? He looked worse than usual for that length of sleeplessness. She amended the question. 

'Since your last fully-utilised sleep period. By which I mean utilised for its intended purpose.' She added snippily before he could revise that initial number downward.

He had to think harder about that, thought process slowed by a level of enervation Phasma could almost smell. He swiped at the screen of the nearest tablet, thumbing through documents and frowning in concentration. She watched expressions flit across his face as he tried to work out that answer to her question. Confusion, irritation, mild disbelief and then satisfaction. 'Ony twenty-three cycles.'

  
She folded her arms and remained silent, looming over him. 

He rolled his eyes, pulling a face of prissy exasperation. They'd had this arguement so many times the words needn't be spoken, just a long pause between them where neither bothered to waste their breath. At last he growled an inarticulate noise of vexation and almost leapt to his feet with a burst of nervous energy. Good, she'd have simply picked him up and tossed him into his bed if it had become necessary, but it was always easier when it happened like this. It meant she didn't have to put up with his sulking about being manhandled, for one.

Phasma let him stride off to the bedroom, instead picking up a partially dismantled blaster from his desk. She ostentatiously examined it as he clattered about in the bedroom and staggered through to the fresher. Wires trailed from the opened casing and she frowned. She couldn't tell what he was trying to do to it and the flimsies on the desk next to it were written in one of his codes. Or maybe that was just his shitty handwriting again. It was hard to tell sometimes.

  
Hux reeled as he surged to his feet. Arguing was futile when Phasma was in that sort of a mood, so he staggered through to his bedroom, limbs weighted with tiredness and his head spinning. As he performed his toilette in the fresher he heard her booted footsteps moving through to the bedroom. When he came back out she was sat on the bed, leaning against the headboard with her blaster neatly placed in her lap as she switched on her tablet. 

  
He changed and slipped under the covers, reeling with a sick feeling of disorientation as he hit the horizontal axis. She was right and he swallowed back the nausea the shift in orientation had caused. Closing his eyes against the dizziness he fumbled in the drawer of his bedside table for his sleeping pills, swallowed two of them dry and set an alarm. The black void swallowed him.

  
As soon as his breathing evened out Phasma set aside her troop reports to observe him. The general was out cold, limp and drugged and she almost didn't recognise his face when it was slack like that. There was so much to do in service of the Order and if the general required maintenance in order to keep on serving then she would accept that duty and guard his sleep.


End file.
